Issue #1

Let there be light.

Issue #1 : Let there be light.

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Hi Pythonistas. We have truly been overwhelmed by the influx of sign ups the newsletter has had over 3000 subscribers. We have had a few people email us about a RSS Feeds as well as archives on the site. We will be rolling those out soon. We have been really focusing on getting this issue out to all of you. Hope you enjoy it!

-- Mahdi and Mike

News and Latest Developments.

Tornado 2.2This release of Tornado comes with improved compatibility with Twisted as well as expanded WebSocket Support.

Django 1.4 Beta 1 ReleasedJames Bennett, has announced that the latest version of Django has entered a preview and testing phase. James is urging the community to test it out and hop in on killing some bugs before the final 1.4 release (due in March). You can get a copy here. Oh, they also dropped python2.4 support.

Mock 0.8Newest Release of your favorite python mocking library has been released. Michael Foord has said the changeset since the previous version is quite vast, but has promised to write up a couple of blog posts summarizing the big changes. Keep an eye out.

Py3K Status UpdateAntonio Cuni, has been working relentlessly since Pypy was successfully funded to pursue implementing Python 3. Here Antonio is updating the community on progress as well as thanking them for the donations that got the project off the ground.

Pypy 1.8 -- Business as usualPypy guys don’t seem to be holding back with the updates, tons of bug fixes as well as performance and memory improvements over the previous release 1.7.

Discussions.

SQLAlchemy Vs. Django ORMThis discussion was sparked by question asked on /r/python albiet a bit naive initially. It led to a good discussion on the short comings of the Django ORM and the stability and robustness of SQLAlchemy. Mike Bayer (SQLAlchemy's author) chimed in pretty earlier to give his two cents on the discussion.

Projects.

Django-JHouston"Houston, we have a Javascript problem!". Store your javascript errors that occur in the browser in the database for logging and debugging purposes. Very useful for tracking down Javascript errors that weren’t caught during testing. @pennersr

mitmproxymitmproxy is a an SSL capable man-in-the-middle-proxy. It allows HTTP(and other) traffic to be inspected and edited on the fly. Don’t be caught unaware by apps like Path any more, now you can know what data you are sending and receiving from remote servers. @cortesi

PBSPBS is a unique sub process wrapper that maps your system programs to Python functions dynamically. PBS is really neat because it allows you to access common programs on your system like ls, curl, cd, and etc. Then it provides a clean interface for you to use in your python scripts.

Articles.

Running Sentry on DotCloudSentry is an open source, real time event logging and aggregation system. Ken provides a really thorough tutorial for getting Sentry up and running on your DotCloud account. It takes you step by step through the setup process and provides a DotCloud deployable repository to bootstrap your Sentry install from. Kudos to Ken for putting in the work!

Advice for PyCon Speakers.Speaking at PyCon for the first time or trying to improve on your previous talks, check out this great resource by Eric Snow. It provides great tips about building your talk, preparing your slides and even a list of do’s and don’ts during your actual talk.

Generator Tricks for System Programmers[2008].This tutorial by David Beasley discusses various techniques for using generator functions and generator expressions in the context of systems programming. Each section of this tutorial from David provides really thorough example code with really excellent real world examples.

Defining a WSGI App Deployment StandardTareq Zaide lays down some thoughts on how WSGI applications deployments should be standardized and how he does this at Mozilla. I will be interested to see what Tareq comes up with at PyCon.

Python Performance Tips - Pt.1.This article starts off by saying that Python doesn’t run as fast as other compiled languages, he clearly hasn’t heard of Pypy. There is a good list of python speedups definitely worth the read, if your in need of a refresher.

Python Web Framework RoundupThere are a lot of web frameworks written in python this post breaks down and summarizes each one with cool metrics like lines of code, the last release date, and what popular projects are built using them. Not to mention an example of ‘Hello World!’ for each one. Thanks Madis Väin!

Who's on Python 3?Who’s on Python 3 is a great dashboard that allows you to see at a glance which of the top 50 python projects fully(or partially) support Python 3. If you want to check out the source for this, you can get it Here. Brought to you by Brett Cannon.

Python Logging Best PracticesDefinitely a cool article for people who want to learn the nuances of setting up logging and using it effectively. Rob provides a humorous easy read.